Released in December 1996 in Japan, September 1997 in Europe, and November 1997 in the US, PaRappa the Rapper is a Rhythm Game for the PlayStation.

The game follows the (mis)adventures of a rapping puppy named PaRappa who attempts to improve himself in order to impress Sunny Funny, the girl he has a crush on, despite being intimidated by the presence of Joe Chin, a rich and narcissistic dog who is also trying to woo Sunny. How does he win Sunny's heart? By rapping his way to glory, of course!

The game works like this: Every stage has one character who raps a song and ask you to perform certain tasks, like learning karate, learning how to drive, selling things at a flea market, etc. in time with the music. You hit a button at the right moment as indicated on a bar at the top of the screen. Effectively, it's a video game version of Simon. Do well and you'll make it through the song; do too badly and you'd have to try again.

But, the rap twist is that during gameplay, PaRappa can deviate heavily from the "teacher", creating his own twisted yet awesome string of button mashes and random sentences, and still score points. In fact, by creating original lines that are synchronized with the rhythm and beat of the teacher's lines, the player can access freestyle-mode, which allows the player to go Ax-Crazy on the controller, make PaRappa look like a superhero doped on crack, and get better endings.

PaRappa has appeared in other media as well. There is also an Anime of the Game, but it only lasted two seasons. Before the anime debuted, Rodney Greenblat, the game's illustrator, had created a series of comic books that are decidedly more true to the game than the anime.

Ambiguous Gender: It is unknown what Jet Baby's gender is. In PaRappa 1, "The Jet Baby Theme Song" refers to the song's title character as a "she", but when PaRappa and his friends walk out of the movie theater, they refer to said character as a "he".

Call-Back: Each of the games starts with the characters watching a movie (usually involving "Jet Baby") with the same weird monster. Then, before the first level starts, they go to "Chunky Burger." In UJL, they even take the exact same dialogue for the bully characters who come in as when they did in the first game.

The bully characters say the same first dialogue lines in PaRappa 2, during a cameo appearance at the start of Stage 5.

Climax Boss: The Bathroom Rap in 1, Teriyaki Yoko in Um Jammer Lammy, and Colonel Noodle in 2. While they aren't the final stages, they do serve to wrap up the plot before the final concert, and are usually the most difficult stages in their respective games.

Creator Cameo: Rodney Greenblat, the character designer of the series, has off-and-on cameo appearances throughout the games, most noticeably as a television reporter in PaRappa 2, but also as the basis for the name of "Rodney State" where the characters live, and the singer of the "Jet Baby" song at the beginning of PaRappa 1. Also, in a bonus scene from Um Jammer Lammy, Ma-San is typing a letter to "Mr. Matsuura" (Masaya Matsuura is one of the game's creators).

Dance Party Ending: As a game about music, this goes without saying. The two Parappa games have Parappa rapping with MC King Mushi Mushi about his heroic actions. The goal of Lammy is to get to the concert that comprises the ending.

Denser and Wackier: The first PaRappa is fairly down-to-earth and plausible, with challenges such as "passing a driving exam" and "baking a cake," and the title character's main goal being to impress the girl he likes. Um Jammer Lammy, the next game in the series, gets considerably more bizarre, but most of the individual stages are still somewhat grounded at the very least, and the main goal of "get to the concert venue on time" isn't particularly out there. PaRappa 2, on the other hand, involves a Shrink Ray, a crazed hairdresser giving everyone spontaneously growing afros, a video game that leaves the player unable to eat anything but noodles ever again if they should lose, and the overall crux of the plot to turn all the food in the world into noodles.

Downloadable Content: The PSP rerelease of PaRappa has downloadable alternate versions of the original 5 songs, while Um Jammer Lammy was released for download on the PlayStation Store.

In a Creator Cameo version, PaRappa Town is in "Rodney State," after Rodney Greenblat.

Feather Fingers: Mostly averted. Nearly all PaRappa characters have humanlike hands regardless of species, including frogs, octopi, and even plants. Interestingly, Cheap Cheap Chicken is one of the few characters, if not the only character, with appendages appropriate for her species, but she seems to be able to manipulate objects just as easily as any human-handed Funny Animal.

Limited Social Circle: Notable aversion, but then play straight. Katy's band members Lammy and Ma-san, have never met Katy's other friends. But by the second game they have evidently formed a single social circle close enough to walk into each other's houses without asking.

Paper People: There's about one character in the game who isn't in this style. Everyone else is paper-thin. Besides stylistic reasons, this decision was likely made to get past the PS1's hardware limitations; either way, it stuck since.

Serious Business: The inhabitants of PaRappa Town sure do seem to be into rapping.

Lampshaded at the beginning of Um Jammer Lammy; Lammy's excuse for being late to her concert was that people wanted to rap for the bathroom, and she only plays guitar. People, please leave the rapping to Parappa!

Split Screen: Happens in Um Jammer Lammy, when Lammy tries hard to fly a plane with Captain Fussenpepper in Stage 4; and in PaRappa 2, when both PaRappa and Guru Ant are grown big for the final time, while you can see Ma-san getting bored (which doubles as a Funny Background Event), as long as you don't mess up.

Widget Series: PaRappa may be a little nuts, even by Japanese standards, but Um Jammer Lammy dives nose-first into full-blown widget territory.

PaRappa-only examples

Actionized Sequel: The first game was about things like taking karate classes, getting a part time job, and getting a driver's license. The second game eventually becomes a game about saving the world from a dietary fate.

Anti-Frustration Feature: The sequel has the difficulty drop during a song if you are screwing up and drop down in rank by making the lyrics more simple, which means less buttons to press or the buttons being spaced farther apart for a slower rhythm. If you do drop down in rank, you get to repeat the section again so you have a shot of recovering.

Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In PaRappa 2's rap song "Noodles Can't Be Beat", when PaRappa and Colonel Noodle rap about how foods can be in worldly cuisines (while going through quick costume changes to represent each culture of cuisine):

Ascended Extra: General Potter only had non-speaking role as Sunny's father in the first game. But in the sequel, he plays a key role in the story.

Same with Papa PaRappa.

Audience Participation Song: The final songs in both games have the audience sing along when called for. The master leads the audience at the beginning while Parappa does it at the end of the song. If you screw up or are just messing around, the audience will perfectly mimic Parappa's rap style.

Boastful Rap: the endings to both games, unusually it is a professional rapper boasting about PaRappa.. In addition, half of the second game's third and seventh raps are each this.

Boss Rush: The first game's fifth involves engaging the four mentors from the other songs in a rap battle in order to get to the toilet. The sixth level in PaRappa 2 had a similar premise, with you facing off with the five mentors in a 16-bit video game.

Breaking the Fourth Wall: If you fail Stage 1 of PaRappa 2, Beard Burger Master will say, "Oh man, that was bad. And what is with this noodle thing?" (presumably referring to the noodle pattern that appears around the screen and covers the background in Bad and Awful modes respectively). PaRappa then sighs, "I always screw up at the beginning..."

Clumsy Copyright Censorship: In the PSP release, PJ Berri and Katy Kat's orders of "a vanilla and a chocolate frosty", respectively, at the burger restaurant mute the word "frosty", possibly because of trademark issues with the Wendy's Frosty.

Corpsing: Dred Foxx can't help but laugh a bit during his "melt the cheese" line in Toasty Buns when Beard Burger Master lets out an excited "OW!" between his lines.

Don't Try This at Home: In the 1st lesson of the 5th stage of the second game, this text is shown in brackets where the lyrics are usually displayed. For the record, the activity shown is hair styling, though it's about as extreme as it can be with people running with scissors.

Downloadable Content: The PSP rerelease of the first game has downloadable alternate versions of the original 5 songs.

Easy-Mode Mockery: If you want all the stages, you'll have to play on normal difficulty, as easy only allows access to the first three.

Evil Costume Switch: Colonel Noodles in PaRappa 2. After failing to turn all the burgers into noodles in Stage 1, he moves away during the news report in the intro to Stage 2, and now switches to his signature costume in the intro to Stages 4 and 7. During the rap battle with PaRappa, while they are still convincing each other about which food is better, Noodles suddenly raps that noodles "taste better than water" before water pours down at Noodles on cue, washing his plate off of him along with his glasses and his noodle afro hat; and he is now fully convinced that other foods taste just as good, resulting in a Good Costume Switch back to normal in Stage 8.

Expy: Instructor Moosesha in PaRappa 2 is an Expy of her sister, Inspector Mooselini, from the first game, who is neither mentioned by name nor shown.

Fake Difficulty: Provided by the original game's cumbersome timing window. This game also debuted before the advent of TVs with extensive video and audio pre-processing, and hence it has no lag adjustment options. Good luck playing it on a modern TV.

Foreshadowing: In PaRappa 2, if PaRappa messes up a segment during stage 1, Beard Burger Master's son is seen laughing from a corner with a strange machine. The machine is the Noodlizer, and it's revealed later that BBM's son is Colonel Noodle.

Friend to All Children: Discussed by Rodney Greenblat in his "The Jet Baby Theme Song": "When Jet Baby loves, / She loves all of the children."

Frothy Mugs of Water: Only in the U.S. version of PaRappa 2, Stage 1, even though Beard Burger Master's voice says, "You better get in line!" his lips say, "Taste better than wine!", which was in the Japanese and European versions.

Justified in Stage 7, in any version of PaRappa 2, when Colonel Noodles raps, "Noodles are the best, no doubt, can't deny, taste better than water, but don't ask me why," in a nod to his father's "Taste better than wine" lyric (Japan/Europe version only), before water pours down at Noodle on cue.

Funny Background Event: Joe Chin dropping his gigantic, forty-two story high cake near the beginning of the intro for "Full Tank".

Here We Go Again: The opening for Parappa the Rapper 2 has Parappa waking up surrounded by noodles, claiming that he won a life-time's supply of them. The game ends with him having dinner at Sunny's, telling the player that, this time, he's won a life-time's supply of cheese.

Interestingly, in one of the RodneyFun comics, PaRappa mentions wanting to "have many babies" with Sunny.

I Want to Be a Real Man: After an incident in the sequel's prologue leads to Sunny calling PaRappa a baby, he spends the whole game trying to act mature. Sunny eventually tells him that he only needs to try his best.

It's a Wonderful Failure: Fail stage 5 of the original, and it's heavily implied that PaRappa poops in his pants, symbolized by a video of a rocket blasting off.

Kirk Summation: The entire 7th level of PaRappa 2 was about PaRappa trying to convince Colonel Noodles that there are many excellent foods in the world that would be lost if he turned everything into noodles.

Level One Music Represents: In the 'PSP' rerelease of the game, most levels get one or two downloadable remixes. Stage 1 gets five.

Hairdresser Octopus: "Hey, take that stupid hat off. What does it look like in there?"

PaRappa: "Ahh... I'm not sure myself."

Logic Bomb: In Prince Fleaswallow's rap, he says "I've been working here [at the flea market] since my mama was a baby". Think about that.

Mad Libs Dialogue: The first Parappa game was very prone to this with Parappa himself with most of his lyrics being obviously spliced to match the button inputs. The sequel does a better job at hiding it, but on the higher difficulty levels, both Parappa and the masters fall into the trope hard due to how much remixing the lyrics are given and it can sound quite hilarious at times. The sequel's 2 player mode also falls into this since the game will adjust the lyrics to match the button presses of the previous player if it thinks they freestyled good enough.

Pursuing Parental Perils: We learn in the intro to Stage 7 of PaRappa 2 that Beard Burger Master became so obsessed with burgers and their research that he would compel his son Colonel Noodles to eat burgers daily along with everyone else, including Noodles' mother, who became so obsessed with burgers that she turned into one (figuratively). Even worse was that Noodle had become destined to become a burger shop owner like his dad from the day he was born. We're assuming that Beard Burger Master died being obsessed with burger research, and after Noodles ate some pasta and noodles because he loved noodles more than burgers, he decided to start on noodle research and do to the citizens of PaRappa Town what his burger-obsessed father did to him years ago: compel them to eat noodles daily until the day he would die, which is very dangerous indeed!

Rap the Curse Out Of Him: PaRappa fixes Hairdresser Octopus's obsession with taking people hostage to give them giant afro's by beating him in a rap while also helping him snip, cut, trim, dye, and perm people's hair. Oh, and destroy the Noodlizer so his behavior won't continue.

Real Song Theme Tune: In the intro to the fourth stage right after the "I gotta believe" part, when the announcer is announcing Cheap Cheap's cooking show, a snippet of "Tijuana Taxi" by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass (played in a slightly slower tempo) can be heard.

Sequel Difficulty Drop: Parappa 2 is significantly easier than the first game by having the timing window for button presses be more forgiving, getting a Cool rank is easier to obtain, and dropping down to Bad or Awful will have the master repeat the last set of lyrics to give you a chance to redo your mistakes without running into a possible Unwinnable game. Rising back to the rank of Good from this state will put you back to where you were originally before the rank drop so that you don't have to redo parts of the lyrics yet again and possibly screw up the same parts.

Ship Tease: Stage 8 of PaRappa 2 teases PaRappa/Lammy: PaRappa sings with Lammy, who's playing with him on stage, while Sunny just watches from the audience with her father.

Shrink Ray: The unmodified De-Noodlizer in PaRappa 2 can shrink or enlarge characters (including PaRappa) when a certain character presses the button on its remote control, even with help from the Guru Ant, of course.

Sophisticated as Hell: Cheap Cheap has a stereotypical British voice, but is still a pretty great rapper.

The Television Talks Back: There was an entire level in PaRappa the Rapper like this. A subversion, as Cheap Cheap's literally right next to him. (The "television" is actually a frame she kept around herself, for some reason. This is revealed only if you're in "Cool" mode, and if you start doing badly note she'll stomp right out of the TV frame to teach Parappa how to cook personally, and what's also curious is how she has a TV filter to her voice while speaking through the television, which goes away as soon as she comes to Parappa in person. (This is lampshaded by PaRappa asking her how she got out of the TV.)

Tutorial Failure: In Parappa the Rapper 2 every level would have Boxy give the player a practice round by giving sample lyrics from the song they would be playing. While it is a good thing to have, the only problem is the practice / tutorial sections are played at the slowest speed possible while the majority of the songs themselves play much faster than that. You have to learn to adjust to the song's tempo and difficulty yourself.

Updated Re-release: The first PaRappa the Rapper game got a rerelease on the PSP and a remaster on the PS4.

Whatthe Hell Is That Accent? Several characters, particularly the hairdresser and burger chef in the second game, have strong accents that don't seem to come from any country in particular.

Wolverine Publicity: The PSP rerelease of the first game contains remixes of the game's songs. The first stage has far and away the most remixes, with five.

Yank the Dog's Chain: Parappa 2 kicks off the adventure with Parappa winning a lifetime supply of noodles and growing sick of eating them. He goes to a burger joint to eat something different and sees that their food have become noodles as well! With a bit of help from the ghost of the Beard Burger Master, Parappa fixes the issue and is about to enjoy his ice cream, only for it to instantly turn into noodles afterwards.

"Fantastic Voyage" Plot: In one episode ("Did You Say You Didn't Sleep?!"), PaRappa's friend PJ gets infected by a virus, which causes him to grow into a giant every time he eats. This causes [PaRappa and his friends to get absorbed into his body and get rid of the virus in order to turn him back to normal.

I Was Quite The Looker: Katy's boring neighbor rambles on about this to whoever is willing to listen. Nobody believes her until Katy finds some old posters in a decaying theater of her when she was a dancer.

Loves My Alter Ego: Paula falls in love with the deejay at Club Fun, unaware that it's actually PJ. She's scandalized shen she finds out they are one in the same, even though she could have asked almost anyone and they would have told her.

Poke the Poodle: Gaster begins the series at least mildly criminal by stealing Parappa's bike and a box of garage sale money, but quickly devolves into criminal acts like tearing posters and picking coins up off of the ground.

Lethal Chef: Sunny Funny in the second book, nearly literally around the end. When Sunny forgets to buy the ingredients she needs, she decides to improvise. Needless to say, none of Sunny's guests would touch it. (Except for PJ) As for the dessert, well... FlamingDynamiteStrawberryOnionCake, anyone?

No Smoking: Averted. Both PaRappa's dad and Mr. Prince Fleaswallow are seen smoking on separate occasions.

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